The Last Lecture: Baccalaureate Sermons at Princeton University

The last lecture: Baccalaureate sermons at Princeton University, 1876-1969 Until a student takes his diploma in hand and leaves town, I never give up hoping that Princeton will get to him! Robert Goheen (1971) Religion 505: Festival, Ritual and Celebration in American Religion Professor Leigh Eric Schmidt Princeton University 12 January 1993 Daniel Edward Sack Rituals tell us about the communities that produce them. They embody the values, priorities, needs, and desires of the people who come together to enact them. Academic communities are no different. The growth of higher education and the rise of scientific positivism in the past century has challenged the idea of college as community, but for most institutions it remains a central part of their identity. These institutions reinforce their sense of community in part through ritual. This paper looks at one particular ritual—the baccalaureate service—at one particular institution—Princeton University. This service, held to mark the end of the academic year and to celebrate the success of the graduating seniors, gives the university an opportunity to make explicit the values and ideals that underlay their education. The baccalaureate sermon is the last lecture of a Princeton student's college career. After looking at the context for the baccalaureate sermons, this paper reads more closely a selection of sermons from 1876 to 1969.* It looks for common themes among these sermons, and proposes that these themes reflect the purposes of the Princeton 'Practicality defines the first date, and subject the last. Records of commencements before the last quarter of the nine• teenth century are fairly slim in the university archives; 1876 is the first baccalaureate text readily available. During most of the university's history the president preached the bacca• laureate sermon; in 1973 this duty shifted to guest preachers from outside the university. The next few pages will suggest the importance of this change. 2 community and reflect a "Princeton religion." Before looking more closely at the content of the sermons, this paper needs to look at the context of the baccalaureate service. It is a religious service held at the end of the academic year specifically for the graduating class, the term baccalaureate referring to the bachelor's degree that the graduates receive. While at some schools the baccalaureate sermon was preached at commencement, at Princeton and most other schools the baccalaureate sermon is delivered at a ceremony or service devoted particularly to that purpose, part of graduation festivities but separate from the commencement ceremony itself. The account of the College of New Jersey's first commencement in 1748 reports no baccalaureate sermon; the earliest discovered so far dates to 1760, preached by Samuel Davies.^ By the middle of the nineteenth century the baccalaur• eate sermon had become a public activity; when moving it to a more convenient date and location caused some distress in the surrounding community. A local paper noted that the service has been changed from the Sabbath before commencement, when the sermon used to be preached by the venerable President to the students, in the First Presbyterian Church, to the Sabbath after the final examination of the senior class, and is now preached in the college chapel. This change is much regretted by the crowds that were accustomed to hear, on these solemn occa• sions, the admonitory parting words of the venerated President to the young.^ This move put the baccalaureate sermon on the Sunday closest to Class Day, in May just after exams, and directed the baccalaur- 3 eate sermon more at the students and other members of the campus community. The service returned to the Sunday before commence• ment in 1870.^ By the 1870s the increasing size of the college moved the baccalaureate service back to the Presbyterian church, evidently replacing the regular service at 11 o'clock Sunday morning before commencement. One observer in 1876 noted what he called "the old-established custom" as the senior class "met the President at the Chapel and conducted him to the church."^ Eighteen eighty- two, however, saw the dedication of Marquand Chapel, and services were moved back onto campus.^ The service remained in the chapel until 1896 when, due to the pressure of numbers, the baccalaureate moved to Alexander Hall. There it remained until the current chapel was finished in 1928. By the middle of the twentieth century the baccalaureate sermon occupied a important symbolic role in the weekend's events, as the morning religious service on campus and the kickoff to commencement proper. As a letter sent to the class of 1949 indicates, the Baccalaureate Address by President Dodds on Sunday morning, June 12, at eleven o'clock, officially inaugu• rates graduation activities. An integral part of the last phase of undergraduate life. Baccalaureate has always been in many ways the most impressive ceremony in a Princeton career.^ Whatever else baccalaureate was, some members of the class consi• dered it an important beginning to the commencement events. Baccalaureate was impressive, but it is unclear how impor• tant this service was to the graduates. The chapel, which seats A almost two thousand, was always full for the service; the class of '49, for instance, was limited to two tickets each/' And yet the report of the Class Day committee reflects concern about low attendance, noting optimistically that although attendance that year was "still below normal it was fifty per cent better than last year." The report continued. Several members of the Class Day Committee were most enthusiastic about the Baccalaureate Service and regretted that more of their classmates had not availed themselves of the opportunity to participate.^ Unfortunately, the archives don't reflect what might have made some seniors unenthusiastic about attending baccalaureate. Some oral history here would be useful. For almost all Princeton's history, the baccalaureate preacher was the college's president, even the laymen (after 1902). This central role of the president as preacher reflects the history of the early American college. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century the American college existed not solely to teach students but also, as Frederick Rudolph puts it, to make "men out of boys." Rudolph notes the "impressive arsenal of wea• pons" for such a task, including "unrelenting revivals, unheated dormitories, and underpaid professors." The most important person in this work, however, was the college president. In the president's course for seniors, Rudolph writes, known almost everywhere as moral and intellectual philosophy, the full force of a mature mind and per• sonality was turned upon a variety of subjects consid• ered essential to the formation of true character. Transplanted from the universities of eighteenth- century England and Scotland, the course in moral and intellectual philosophy embraced the tough problem of 5 how to reconcile man's newly emancipated reason and natural law with the old theology and Christian law.'' In the college's work of making Christian gentlemen, this senior course was the capstone; the character of each graduate was shaped by the character of the course and the man who taught it. Witherspoon planted this tradition early at Princeton; as Wertenbaker notes, "to the seniors the Old Doctor [Witherspoon] was familiar enough, for they had to sit under him in several of their courses, finding him an excellent and clear teacher."'° To an alumnus who returned for his tenth year reunion in 1887, President McCosh was a model teacher. No college in America has a teacher in mental phylo- sophy [sic] and psichology [sic] who equals Dr. McCosh. He is recognized as the peer of any thinker or writer on such subjects in the century, as perhaps the most successful Christian gladiator in the combats with the Spencers, Huxleys, and Tyndalls of these latter days. It is a rare thing that a young man who has heard McCosh's lectures on ancient and modern philosophy is led captive by any of the German "isms" which are so attractive and insinuating. This alumnus concludes that, thanks to McCosh, "Princeton seems to be the only remaining great seat of learning where sons can be sent with some certainty of their remaining Christians."'' The president was personally responsible for the nurturing of the young men in the charge and for the preservation of their faith. That is why the baccalaureate address was so important—it was in effect the last lecture of the senior course. It was the president's last opportunity to shape iiis students. The role of the president changed as the university changed, of course, and Robert Goheen is quick to disavow theological 6 pretensions. "I never thought of myself as a preacher," he says. "I was talking in a beautiful building of religious origin." Yet he does see his role as important. I was trying to convey to the students the most impor• tant things the university had given them. When I looked back over the fifteen talks I had given, I saw a common theme: the importance of conjoining the life of the mind with moral concern, the relationship of mind and spirit and faith. Altough Goheen never taught a senior course and never saw himself as a preacher, his "talks" did serve the same role as those of his predecessors—to sum up a Princeton education in some moral or spiritual way. The president does speak at commencement, but informally. "The baccalaureate sermon has more of a moral tone than commence• ment, " says Goheen. "The president makes no real address at commencement, but just some light remarks."'-'' In 1973 the newly inaugurated William Bowen decided to speak his piece at commence• ment and let someone else preach the baccalaureate sermon. Since then the baccalaureate preachers have included a variety of speakers, some alumni and some not, some clergy and some not.

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